Akamai CDN Integration Guide

This document describes how to apply Forensic Watermarking embedding with Akamai CDN which is pre-integrated with PallyCon FWM.

Integration Workflow

graph LR;
    subgraph Content Service Site
    A[Service Backend]
    D[Origin server] -->|A/B variant stream| E(CDN Edge)
    end
    subgraph End User
    A -->|4. Stream URL with WMT| B(Client player)
    E -->|5. Watermark embedded stream| B
    end
    subgraph PallyCon SaaS
    A -->|1. Session data| C(Session manager)
    C -->|2. Store session data| C
    C -->|3. Stream URL with WMT| A
    end

1. Send session data to PallyCon Session Manager

• While configuring the player, the service backend (CMS) requests a watermarked stream URL to PallyCon Session Manager via PallyCon Session Manager API.
• The request contains the stream info and the session data of the client such as user ID, IP address, and timestamp.

2. Store session data and generate watermark token

• PallyCon Session Manager stores the session data and generate watermark token for response.

3. Response stream URL with watermark token (WMT)

• The Session Manager creates the watermarked stream URL by including the WMT as a virtual path component (VPC) of the stream.
• Please refer to this guide from Akamai for more details.

4. Set the stream URL with WMT to the client player

• The stream URL (including WMT) is sent to the client player to start playback.

5. Watermark embedding and playback

• Akamai edge mixes the A/B variant stream from origin server based on the watermarking pattern in the WMT.
• The client player plays the watermark embedded stream the same way as non-watermarked stream.

Akamai CDN Integration Process

If you use Akamai CDN for content delivery, you can utilize the pre-integrated Akamai Adaptive Media Delivery interface with PallyCon Forensic Watermarking.

1. Ask to your Akamai account representative to get the watermarking behavior added to your contract.

2. Contact PallyCon team to get the token signing and pattern encryption values required for the below configuration.

3. Add the watermarking behavior in your Akamai property configuration as described here.